Tuesday 25 September 2012 10.11 EDT
First published on Tuesday 25 September 2012 10.11 EDT

The train clattered through the darkness. It was an old train and the carriages bucked and wheezed, struggling against the buffers that stopped them flying off into the night. The sea lay in shadows to the left; to the right was a thin strip of pale blue horizon, trees, and a mountain range that rose and fell, visible only by the sudden absence of light. On the left side now a refinery on the shore. Gas flares lit the water red and gold, gold and red. Mouse pressed his nose against the window and watched the flames dance upon the water.

He slid open the window and lit a cigarette; it burnt down quickly in the blast of rich, warm air that swept into the carriage. When the cigarette was finished he sent it spinning out into the night, following the small red spark as it was whipped away by the wind. It was now entirely dark outside the hurtling train. He stared into the blackness, past the chubby ghost of his reflection, thinking ahead to London, the Course and Lee. He reached into his bag, drew out his battered mobile phone and sent her a text, grinning as he typed.

He walked from Euston, dragging his suitcase behind him. It took him over an hour, but he liked walking in London at night when there were few people around. Taxis, lights extinguished, carried tired drivers home to the suburbs. A young couple walked ahead of him, elbows linked, perhaps drunk. Their bodies swayed together and apart like fronds of seaweed. The girl tripped and the boy placed a protective arm around her shoulders. Mouse hurried past them, wheezing. He made his way into the echoing darkness under the Westway and stepped carefully along the pavement that clung to the edge of the underpass.

Little Venice dozed in the warm September night, slabs of light thrown onto the water from a handful of lit windows. A moorhen hooted somewhere out of sight. Mouse quickened his pace, his feet scuffing the stones of the towpath. Rubbish floated in the lagoon, drifting between the thin fingers of a willow tree that stirred the water absentmindedly, picking through beer cans and polystyrene cups and plastic bags. In the shadow of Trellick Tower, he stopped to smoke a cigarette, sitting on his suitcase in the long grass that bordered the path. The vegetation was thick and dry. He plucked a stalk of grass and ran the feathery end under his round chin. He needed a shave. He wanted to look good for the Course. Flicking his cigarette into the water, he grabbed the handle of his bag and continued along the canal.

Finally, he came to the boat. It sat moored between two barges, uglier and higher than its neighbours. Gentle Ben – the name in ornate serif lettering on the stern – was an old Dawncraft Dandy, once the white weekend plaything of a pinstriped yuppie. It was now a dirty cream colour, the curtains were brown and raggy, the toilet gurgled foul smells. But the boat allowed Mouse to live in London, to exist among his friends; he loved the flap of the water against the hull at night, the dawn song of birds in Kensal Green Cemetery, the gasometers that sighed as they sank, moaned as they rose. A Jolly Roger fluttered gaily from the stern of the boat, the white skull just visible in the dim light. Mouse let himself into the cabin, turned on the generator and threw himself down on the narrow bed.

*

Lee Elek sat on her balcony, looking out over the lights of London. A book lay open on her lap, but it was too dark to read. The petals of the heavy-headed rose that climbed the trellis behind her had faded to grey in the dusk. Her hair was twisted into a bun and held in place with a pencil; a single blonde strand dropped down her cheek and she drew it into her mouth, feeling the sharp ends of the hairs, prodding at them with her tongue. Darwin was asleep beside her bare feet. The dachshund was dreaming: his short back legs galloped the air, his wet black nose twitched. Lee lit a cigarette. Music played on the stereo inside, quietly enough that single notes only emerged occasionally, hesitantly, wrenched from among the sounds of the city: taxis rushing up Kensington Church Street, aeroplanes queuing to land at Heathrow, shouts from the bars on the High Street. She drew smoke into her mouth and blew it out of her nose.

She had stumbled out of the library earlier, her breaths coming in quick gasps. It was one of her moodswung days. She couldn't focus on the self-righteous saints and strung-out mystics she was supposed to be writing about. She skipped lunch and spent the afternoon walking purposeful diagonal paths across Holland Park. Darwin whipped along on his leash behind her like a crashed kite. An hour before the gates of the park closed, she sat down heavily on a bench in front of the Orangery. She took deep breaths, stilled her mind, and ran her hand through Darwin's soft brown coat. She usually knew how to drag herself up from these depths, but this time she couldn't shake the feeling of doom that smudged her vision and quickened her breath.

She walked home along the High Street, stopping to buy herself sushi from the Japanese takeout on the corner, teriyaki beef for Darwin. Up the winding staircase to her flat under the eaves of the old Kensington house. They ate dinner together on the tiny veranda and then music and wine and cigarettes and a book and slowly the warm day faded around her. At seven thirty she watched the parakeets make their way squawking overhead, flying along the faded milky rails of vapour trails. She imagined them towing the night behind them as they arrowed westwards towards Holland Park, a dark cover attached to the feathers of their tails. She had bestowed upon the birds great symbolism, looked for them desperately if they failed to appear, straining her thin frame over the balcony rail to see around the spire of St Mary Abbots. As if they were the only thing left of hope.

Darwin woke with a start, glanced up at Lee through long dark lashes, then stretched with a creaking yawn. With a last look out over the flickering city, Lee went inside, Darwin trotting behind her. Brushing her teeth in the small oval mirror, she thought ahead to the Course: tomorrow would be their first session as leaders. She shivered. Looking deep into the mirror, past the freckled remains of the summer that sat upon her nose, she imagined standing up on the stage the next day and fainting, falling face-first into the crowd of new members. She blinked and spat into the sink.

A high single bed was perched beneath the skylight in Lee's small, untidy bedroom. An upright piano stood against one wall. Photograph albums were spread out on the floor, half-filled with black-and-white pictures. Books rose in rickety piles either side of the bed, several more sat face-down next to her pillow. She swept them to the ground. Lee peeled back the white duvet cover, took off her clothes and let them lie where they fell. She lifted Darwin onto the foot of the bed, slid under the duvet, and sat up very straight, her eyes wide open, watching the rise and fall of the sausage dog's sleeping body. It would all be fine once Mouse was here. She pictured his face: the darting, protuberant eyes, the chubby cheeks flushed red, the shriek of blond hair. Her phone beeped. She read the text and smiled, sank back onto her pillows and stared up at the ceiling, the mobile still gripped in her small, hothand.

*

Marcus Glass lay on his back looking up at his wife. Abby's eyes were tightly closed. Her bottom lip, sucked between large teeth, formed a pink question mark of concentration. Her hands were pressed to her chest, flattening white breasts. She let out a series of high-pitched moans. He never felt further from her than when they were having sex. He didn't know whether her groans were indicative of pleasure or annoyance, couldn't tell if her pinched face meant that she was lost in the moment or boiling with frustration. He placed his hands on her large thighs and she, irritated, opening her eyes for a moment, lifted them off and resumed her grinding rhythm.

"Don't move." Her voice came thick and sharp. "Now, move a little bit. Just there. No. No, not there. Now come out and go back in again."

Marcus was fairly sure that she was already pregnant. He kept a record of her periods on his calendar at work and watched for tampons in the bathroom bin. As he looked up he saw a slight heaviness around her jaw, a swelling of her nipples. But they continued to have sex as if it were a religious ritual, with the same unthinking repetition. He knew it was partly for the relief of orgasm, for those white seconds in which she could spit herself out of the world. But she didn't enjoy any of the build-up. He saw her struggling above him.

He blamed the Course. It never used to be this bad. When they were first together it had been wonderful. Occasionally difficult but ultimately magnificent. Now it was like watching someone labouring up a hill, leaning into the wind and trudging desperately towards the top. He could see her nails digging into her chest and knew that there would be ten crescents of blood by the time they finished.

"That's it. You've almost got it. A bit faster. That's it."

Marcus thought about death to stop himself coming. Abby insisted that she was more likely to conceive if she came and so she pushed herself towards orgasm after increasingly joyless orgasm. As Marcus began to move more quickly beneath her, as he became aware of the friction and the warmth and the first whispers of pleasure, he thought of clay-cold death. But he had to work hard to stop himself panicking. Once, he had thrown Abby backwards, staggered to the bathroom and plunged his head into a basin of cold water until the frantic beating in his chest stopped. But now, two years into their marriage, he was able to control the rush of terror.

He pictured his father on the tennis court. It was high summer and their shadows danced beneath them. Marcus was hitting the ball well; the heavy air hummed with the whump of his ground strokes, the quiver of the strings, the skidding of quick-stopped trainers. He sent his father running from one tramline to the other, cut drop shots skimming wickedly low over the net. The day heated up around them. As Abby's moans rose in pitch, Marcus remembered the moment he saw his father's racquet drop to the ground; the ball he was about to hit thumped into the fence at the back of the court. His father sank to his knees. Marcus leapt the net and fell to his own knees to face his father. Through the white T-shirt, translucent with sweat, Marcus could see a dark triangle forming just below his father's throat. He remembered thinking it looked like a vagina. A purple vagina creating itself beneath the damp cotton. Slowly, his father fell backwards. Marcus pressed at his chest, panted stale air into his lungs, screamed and shrieked until his mother came sprinting down from the house, wringing her hands and already sobbing. Marcus's sister arrived a few moments later, by which time it was clear that their father was dead. As his sister sat down, deflated, against the cross-hatch fence of the tennis court, Marcus watched something change in her face, something irrevocable that would colour everything that followed. He recognised it because he felt the same thing himself. He was nineteen.

Bellowing, Abby came. Marcus, with a little exhausted sigh, followed. He felt himself grow limp quickly afterwards, suddenly lost within her. Abby scrunched her eyes shut, milking the last shudders. When it was over she seemed smaller, slightly ashamed. She rocked backwards and lay with her pelvis tilted upwards, a pillow thrust beneath her buttocks. Marcus got up and walked to the window. Outside there was nothing but dark sky and, in the distance, the black coffin of Trellick Tower. He pressed his hands on the cold glass, carefully arranging his left hand so that it covered the reflection of Abby's face. After a few minutes she turned the light off, pulled the covers up over her bare shoulders and curled her knees to her chest.

*

David Nightingale sat in his study, with the stillness of the rectory at night wrapped tightly around him. The high sweep of his forehead was bathed in green light from the lamp on his desk. Behind him on the wall was a wood-framed poster. Almost a decade younger in the photograph, his hair still sandy-blond then, he smiled above that year's advertising slogan: Come and Have a Deep and Meaningful. It had been a good Course as he remembered it. The first year they had expanded outside London. Now a map on the opposite wall showed hundreds of red flags dotted around the country: churches where the Course was taught. He shuffled the papers he had been working on, leaned back and stretched, looking up into the pleasing shadows of the high ceiling, the delicacy of the cornice-work. Occasionally he heard the distant howl of a police siren on the King's Road. Otherwise there was nothing but the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece and the creaking of his wife preparing for bed in the room above.

He looked over the Course accounts. He had long stopped trying to follow the sophisticated investment vehicles that the Earl had set up. Money was funnelled through Cayman Island trusts, distributed among the various charities and not-for-profit organisations that came under the Course umbrella, managed by banker members who waived their fees and saved their best opportunities for the Course's monthly investment meetings. David whistled to himself when he saw how much had been set aside for developing the Course internationally. The US remained the primary target. He and the Earl had just returned from a trip to New York, where there was standing room only for David's speech in the ballroom of the Plaza. Eager priests had rushed to press his hands afterwards, snapping up copies of The Way of the Pilgrim and the Course DVD. It was good to be back at St Botolph's, though. This was where it all began. This was the Course's home.

Only on the nights before the start of a new Course did he regret giving up smoking. He picked up a pencil from his desk, gripped it between his fingers, drew it to his lips and inhaled, breathing in the sweet tang of the wood, the sharpness of the lead. He realised how ridiculous this was and chuckled quietly to himself. He hadn't smoked since university. And this was the tenth year he had been leading the Course. Strange that he still felt the nerves, still worried that he would bound onto the stage in front of the young upturned faces to find that he was stuck for words, floundering in the glare of the bright lights and wide eyes. There would be new Course leaders tomorrow. He let his mind settle upon each of them in turn: Marcus, Abby, Mouse and Lee. He knew they would be anxious, perhaps unable to sleep, and he allowed their imagined nervousness to merge with his own. Lee's face dwelt the longest in his mind. She was troubled – he realised this – but the air of quiet panic that hung around her was one of the reasons she'd be so good as a Course leader. Nothing pushes people away like piety. A certain fragility of faith, if kept in check, could be comforting. He would need to watch her, though.

Lying in bed later, he listened to his wife snoring. His arms were behind his head and he flexed his biceps in a nervous, monotonous rhythm. He was proud of his body. He had not developed the middle-aged dough of his peers; he jogged along the King's Road every morning, played tennis at the houses of wealthy Course members on Saturday afternoons. Propped on his pillow, he looked down at his wife, watched the tremor that passed along her upper lip with each exhalation. She no longer dyed her hair; mousy-grey strands fell down her face and trembled in her breath. He ran over his speech one final time, frowning and smiling as he would on the stage, pausing for a ripple of laughter, glancing down for a moment and then fixing the room with the intensity of his pale blue eyes. When he had finished, he pressed his palms together, muttered a prayer, placed a hand gently upon his wife's sleeping face and with a quiet 'Amen', he turned onto his side and fell asleep.